4IO THE NATURAL HISTORY 



they allowed themselves to be captured on or near 

 the box with the greatest ease, even by the hand, 

 although under ordinary circumstances their flight is 

 so swift, that in our subsequent experience we have 

 found it no trifling exercise to run them down suc- 

 cessfully. At the conclusion of this very satisfactory 

 experiment, we gave the female her liberty, and 

 returned to the setting-board with a full conviction 

 that anything we had ever read on the subject of 

 " sembling" was within the limits of probability. 



In our introductory remarks on the antennae of 

 insects, we have incidentally touched on the hypothesis 

 that these wonderful agents of communication between* 

 the sensorium and the external world, may fulfil their 

 end by means of a complex sense which man is in- 

 capable of appreciating. Assuming that one of the 

 several functions of the antennae of the male is, not 

 improbably, the perception of certain atmospheric 

 influences emanating from the unimpregnated female, 

 we can understand the object for which these organs 

 are more deeply pectinated than those of the female 

 in this and many other species. It is obviously to 

 enable the insect to expose a more extended sensitive 

 surface to the medium in which these emanations are 

 diffused, but whether the faculty of perception on this 

 extended surface, be identical with, or analogous to 

 either of the human senses of smell, hearing, or touch, 

 differing from these only in the possession of greater 

 acuteness, or a blending of all three (if not a totally 

 distinct sense of which man can have no conception) 

 is matter of speculation, and will continue to be so 

 until the special organ of each sense has been 

 localized. 



The Oak Eggar (Bombyx quercus) ; the Grass Eggar 

 (Bombyx Trifolii] ; the Drinker (Odonestis potatorid) ; 

 and the Lappet (Lasiocampa quercifolia), we have 

 repeatedly reared from the caterpillars, found in the 

 lowland meadows, clover fields and hedgerows, and of 



